Free People and Free Markets

Tuesday, January 17, 2017

Let’s first dispense with the spurious notion that Clinton really won. Hillary Clinton’s popular-vote margin of 2.9 million was built on an extremely narrow base. Mrs. Clinton won only in coastal cities, academic enclaves and very poor areas such as the Mississippi Delta and the Alabama Black Belt. Subtract her margins in a mere five counties—the New York City boroughs, save Staten Island, and Los Angeles County—and she lost the popular vote in the remainder of the nation by more than 500,000. Thanks to the foresight of some dead white guys, who protected us with the Electoral College knowing that democracy can be ruinous. It was a democracy that convicted Socrates! We are a republic.

Debris

Obama leaves us with an economy propped up with cheap money, staggering debt, a weakened military, and more racial dis-harmony since the 1960’s.

In Obama’s words We are too divided and “keep talking past each other.” We are increasingly stuck in cultural and intellectual enclaves, and choose whatever news we’re inclined to believe.Right, and he got us there.

On Trump

So far, so good. His cabinet may well be the best in perhaps ever.

Gen. Mattis is that vanishingly rare thing in Washington, a figure of almost universal respect.

Rex Tillerson is distinguished, calm, informed and a world class negotiator.

Sen. Jeff Sessions promises a return to the rule of law.

Gen. John Kelly, nominee to head the Department of Homeland Security, has bipartisan support. Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, said: “I would trust him with my life.”

No better choice could be made for HUD, than Ben Carson who grew up in pubic housing.

Betsy DeVos has devoted much of her fortune to helping poor kids escape failing public schools.
Liberals claim that Mrs. DeVos is unqualified to lead the Education Department because she’s never been a teacher. Yet the same crowd, Warren and Sanders, howl that bankers shouldn’t be regulating banks. Which is it?

Chain The Doors

There was education before there was a department of education. There was trade before there was a commerce department. There was housing before the slums HUD oversees. Transportation, FDA, EPA and the VA. Close them all. Oh yeah, and give the UN 90 days to get out of the country.

The VA? Veterans would be better served by being able to get medical treatment from any private institution. You think the best doctors work for the VA?

On Big Government

I am not interested in any discussion that advocates a strong central government. Hamilton and Madison had that long ago. I come down on the side of Madison and Jefferson. Limited central government and states rights.

There is not one progressive idea that has improved the lot of any disadvantaged person or group. Not one. LBJ did accomplish equal opportunity, civil and voting rights which were enshrined in law. That was positive. But the endless programs that have flowed from it have done no good.

Firearms

Repeal all federal laws concerning firearms.

On His Farewell Speech
By David Harsanyi

Obama’s central case for government’s existence rests on the notion of the state being society’s moral center, engine of prosperity, and arbiter of fairness. He speaks of government as a theocrat might of church—and his fans return the favor by treating him like a pope.

“When Congress is dysfunctional,” Obama explained, “we should draw our districts to encourage politicians to cater to common sense and not rigid extremes.” For the president, a “dysfunctional” Congress means a Congress unwilling to pass progressive legislation.

“No foreign terrorist organization,” the president bragged yesterday, “has successfully planned and executed an attack on our homeland in the last eight years.”

Now, if you don’t count the attack in San Bernardino, or the ISIS-inspired terrorist attack on Pulse, and if you forget the Fort Hood shooting in Texas, and you skip the Boston Marathon bombings then, perhaps, the president’s claim might have some veracity.

Thursday, July 21, 2016

It's been a year since I posted Islam is Islam. I said then there is no need to add modifiers such as Radical to the word Islam. Here is my thinking a year later.Those living in peace have the time to form bonds of love. There has never been peace in Islam, so they don’t know how to love. But hate! Oh God can they hate. They have a deep, deep resentment of anything that might jolt them from their delusions of grandeur and show them for what they are - a decadent savage people controlled by a religion that denies them of all human ambitions. Except for the few of them cruel enough to command them as one commands a mob of sheep.The Koran has many things besides punishment and rewards. It gives instruction about fornication, adultery, alms, murder, corruption, insults, divorce, persecution, wet-nursing, backbiting, gambling, infanticide, heathenism, inheritance, how to sleep, menstruation, intercourse, orphans, eating in others houses, prayer times, ownership of horses, sucking, prohibition of alcohol, retaliation, satans, treatment of slaves, thievery, usury, cunning, omens, diets, food laws, prayers of the evil, sexual abstinence, raising the dead, sexual dishonor, eunuchs, regulations for keeping concubines, evil spirits, why Mohammed must be believed, vanquishing the Greeks, veiling the face, cattle, idolatry, breaking bonds with kin, avarice, ritual washing, head shaving, rules for pilgrims, treatment of enemies and women refugees, lewdness, pregnant camels, rain, perversity, plots, and counterplots. The Koran is a source for how those in a tribe should behave with one another and with other tribes. There is nothing in it like the golden rule. There are no prescriptions like the Ten Commandants. Islam was founded on murder, theft, rape and slavery. When Mohammad led a raid on a neighboring tribe and they came back with a lot of booty, he said it showed they were true believers and that Allah had blessed them for their faith. The Koran sanctions the use of violence. Islam is many things, but it not a religion that promotes a positive culture. What kind of perverse society, religion, culture is it that breeds volcanic hatred?The Koran is laced with hate for Jews. Perhaps because Mohammed was not able to convince Jewish tribes to follow and support him. He attacked them, killed all the men and made slaves of the women and children. Islam is unable to live in peace with anyone, including other muslims. Blood feuds between tribes last for decades and longer. Violence is not confined to inter-tribe rivalries, it’s Shia against Sunni, it’s all Muslims against the infidels. All those ‘...ite tribes you have heard about such as Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, etc. They are still around, some with different names but with legacies and hates going back over two millennia.Mohammad declares that ”Allah is the most accomplished liar and deceiver." From this Mohammad sanctions deception as a means to establish a world-wide caliphate. It’s called Taqiyya and it is the Muslims' license to lie to infidels in order to camouflage Islam's holy war strategy (jihad) to conquer the world. Deception is considered a good work and good works must be done consistently and repeatedly to earn salvation with the except of the greatest work of dying while fighting non-Muslims. I think understanding this is key to understanding that Islam will never be peaceful.When Obama refuses to call terrorism by salifists what it is, he is lying. He is sympathetic to the Islamic State. Of the trillions of dollars received in payment for oil, a western person might wonder why none of it has been used to invest in say manufacturing to provide jobs for when the oil finally runs out. It is because Islam creates a culture that does not promote doing anything for themselves? Any work is best done by servants and non-muslims. The Koran instructs that believers are here awaiting paradise. There is nothing they can do but endure and hate.Why? The answer, in a word, is “liberty.” Something foreign to Islam. Liberated people are ingenious. Slaves, serfs, subordinated women, people frozen in a hierarchy of lords or bureaucrats are not. Western thought is not encouraged. No western literature is translated into Arabic. It is a closed society. It’s difficult for a non-Muslim to get a visa to Saudi. They have contributed nothing to human betterment for centuries, unless you consider the assassin and the terrorist as human gifts.If peace is not possible, what’s to be done with the infestation of Muslims we already have in the western world? Should we continue to allow any to enter the US even as tourists?

Saturday, September 5, 2015

I know that some people believe what that want to believe and disregard facts. I call them libtards. So for the non-libtards, here are some glacial facts.

Fact 1: It is a historical fact that the glacier in Glacier Bay began its retreat around 1750. By the time Capt. George Vancouver arrived there in 1794 the glacier still filled most of the bay but had already retreated some miles. [Hence the name of the bay]By 1900 Glacier Bay was mostly ice-free.

Fact 2:The Huna Tlingit people have lived for more than 4,000 years around the Bay. In the oral tradition of the Huna Tlingit people, it is said that the glacier has advanced and retreated a number of times during their occupation of the area. [I am willing to take their word for it]

All of this happened long before human emissions of greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, could have had any impact.

Thursday, July 23, 2015

I am persuaded that there are no modifiers to Islam. Radical Islam is redundant. Islam started with thievery, murder and slavery. It advanced to assassinations and conquests. Churchill and T. E. Lawrence both understood that it is not a religion at all.

Churchill wrote in 1899 in The River Wars

How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries, improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.

A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement, the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.

Individual Muslims may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.

We are going to have to face the fact that democracy and Islam are not in any compatible. We are going to have to eliminate Islam to have peace.

Thursday, July 2, 2015

The same-sex marriage ruling will unleash the legal furies against those who disagree with it.

This exactly expresses my view.

By WILLIAM MCGURN

Published in the Wall Street Journal June 29, 2015 7:26 p.m. ET

In the heady days since Anthony Kennedy unearthed a constitutional right for Americans “to define and express their identity,” the extravagance of the Supreme Court’s claim has taken some by surprise. It shouldn’t have. In finding for same-sex marriage the way he did, Justice Kennedy made official what he made inevitable a quarter-century back.

That was in 1992. The occasion was a Supreme Court decision on abortion into which Mr. Kennedy inserted a new definition of liberty. Where Thomas Jefferson had grounded human liberty in self-evident truth, Mr. Kennedy holds that the mere self suffices.

“At the heart of liberty,” he wrote, “is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”

Now he has followed through. In Obergefell v. Hodges, the court substitutes for the laws passed by the people acting through their state legislatures a new constitutional right to “dignity” based on the court’s “better informed understanding.”

Back when poor Harry Blackmun in Roe v. Wade established a right to privacy that likewise appears nowhere in the Constitution, he wrote under the conceit that his decision would resolve the issue once and for all. Instead, his 1973 ruling launched the culture wars.

Obergefell is Roe on steroids. Roe legalized a market for abortion for those who wanted them and those who provided them. It was qualified by conscience protections plus riders attached to federal legislation greatly limiting the use of taxpayer dollars to underwrite the practice. So Roe didn’t demand much of those on the other side—or on the sidelines.

Obergefell is another thing altogether. In one of the great flimflams of American life, it is a prescription for endless litigation smuggled in under libertarian clothing. This began with the opening question put to all those who held the classic view of marriage: What can it possibly matter to you, they were asked, if two men or two women who love each other call their relationship marriage?

We learned that it matters a great deal.

It matters to Brendan Eich, who was forced to resign last year as CEO of the company he co-founded after it became public that he had donated $1,000 to Proposition 8, the successful California ballot measure banning same-sex marriage.

It matters to Chick-fil-A, which in 2012 saw the mayors of Chicago and Boston declare the restaurant chain had no place in their cities because its chief executive held the same view of marriage thatBarack Obama held until very recently.

It matters to Catholic Charities, which in several states has been forced out of the adoption business either because the charity does not offer same-sex spousal benefits or declines to place children for adoption with same-sex couples.

It matters for cake bakers, photographers, florists, jewelers and pizza-parlor owners who happily serve gay customers but draw the line at assisting gay weddings.

Finally, it matters to all religious schools and religious institutions. Give the Obama administration its due: The president’s solicitor general admitted during the Obergefell oral argument that a victory for same-sex marriage would put the tax-exempt status of such institutions on the chopping block.

The reason for all this is that the right for men to marry men or women to marry women is only half of the equation—and not even the most important half at that.

The other half involves antidiscrimination statutes and regulations, not to mention the discretion of federal, state and even private bureaucracies regarding everything from funding and accreditation to tax exemption.

In short, there is nothing live-and-let-live about the way this movement has operated the past few years, and to pretend otherwise requires a willful blindness. Now, with Obergefell, the full furies have been released.

As Justice Samuel Alito suggested in his dissent, thousands of Americans who never dreamed that the issue would affect them will soon get highly personal lessons in how the legalization of same-sex marriage by judicial fiat threatens their schools, their institutions and even their livelihoods. This is not your father’s culture war.

A century ago, another Supreme Court justice famously wrote that the Constitution “is made for people of fundamentally differing views.” How far we have traveled since.

Those seeking to crush all dissent from the new judicial orthodoxy on marriage will not always win, not least because the right to the free exercise of religion—in bald contrast to Mr. Kennedy’s right to dignity—is in fact in the Constitution. Still, however individual cases may turn out, by foreclosing the option for democratic debate and compromise the Supreme Court has ensured a bitter national harvest.

Welcome to Justice Kennedy’s world. Where upholding the Kennedy definition of liberty—the right to define your own truth—turns out to mean denying that same right to millions of Americans who define marriage and truth in a way different from his.

Sunday, June 14, 2015

Put me in charge of food stamps. No cash for Ding Dongs or Ho Ho's, just money for 50-pound bags of rice and beans, blocks of cheese and all the powdered milk you can haul away. If you want steak and frozen pizza, then get a job.

Put me in charge of Medicaid. The first thing I'd do is to get women Norplant birth control implants or tubal ligations. Then, we'll test recipients for drugs, alcohol, and nicotine. If you want to reproduce or use drugs, alcohol, or smoke, then get a job. There’s nothing the matter with a vasectomy for the fathers who don't support their children!!

Put me in charge of government housing. Ever live in a military barracks? You will maintain our property in a clean and good state of repair. Your "home" will be subject to inspections anytime and possessions will be inventoried. If you want a plasma TV or Xbox 360, then get a job and your own place.

In addition, you will either present a check stub from a job each week or you will report to a "government" job. It may be cleaning the roadways of trash, painting and repairing public housing, whatever we find for you. We will sell your 22-inch rims and low profile tires and your blasting stereo and speakers and put that money toward the "common good."

Before you write that I've violated someone's rights, realize that all of the above is voluntary. If you want our money, accept our rules. Before you say that this would be "demeaning" and ruin their "self-esteem," consider that it wasn't that long ago that taking someone else's money for doing absolutely nothing was demeaning and lowered self-esteem.

If we are expected to pay for other people's mistakes we should at least attempt to make them learn from their bad choices. The current system rewards them for continuing to make bad choices.

Friday, June 12, 2015

I was in the Navy when the Beatles released their first songs. They were still insanely popular when I got home in 1966. I recall a neighbor girl who went to Atlanta to see them. I thought she was crazy. So I grew up during Beatlemania. I recall images like this one.

Did she later join Jim Jones and drink Kool-Aid? Or perhaps she voted for Obama twice? In spite of 20 years of knowledge that HRC is serial liar, will she vote for her?